Site traces huge payouts slave owners received after abolition

When the United Kingdom abolished slavery in 1833, the
government of the day paid out £20m in compensation -- not to
slaves, but to their owners. What happened next to that money has
been tracked by a
team of historians from UCL, whose new site, Legacies of British Slave
Ownership, launched today.

Building upon the work of historian Nick Draper -- who spent
three years researching the name of every slave owner in the
British Caribbean at the time of slavery's abolition -- the UCL
team have spent another three years following the money from the
point of compensation. The hope is to shed light on the real impact
of slavery on the history of the UK in all spheres of life, seeing
the immediate impacts on the physical, cultural, artistic and
political spheres of British society.

Speaking to Wired.co.uk, researcher Keith McClelland said: "40
to 50 percent [of the £20m] stayed in the UK, and was distributed
amongst about 3,000 people. There were a total of almost 47,000
people who received compensation, so the money that stayed in
Britain was disproportionate to the number of people claiming.
There were some who received a great deal of money, but there were
also ordinary middle class people who made claims for relatively
small amounts of money, relative to the total. Interestingly, if
you look at all of the claims, in the Caribbean roughly 40 to 50
percent of the claimants were women. We have this tale of women not
owning property, but in fact there were significant numbers of
women owning slaves as property. About 25 percent of the people in
Britain who received compensation were women."

The £20m payment represented 40 percent of the British
government's budget at the time, and translates to around £16.5bn
today. One high-profile individual who received compensation
was George
Hibbert, one of the founders of the West India Company, who
received more than £63,000 across 19 claims -- an amount worth more
than £49m in today's money. Another was John
Gladstone, father of prime minister William Gladstone, who
received more than £105,000 for his nine claims, more than £83m if
awarded today. He invested much of that money in railways around
the UK, as well as in funding the construction of the Liverpool
Collegiate Institution, a part of which survives today as Liverpool
College independent school. Hibbert amassed a huge art collection,
including works by artists such as Rembrandt and Rubens, and also
greatly expanded his country house on his estate in
Hertfordshire, a building which still stands today.

"The Royal Bank of Scotland had its foundations in part in
the slavery business, but there are many companies that are
connected in some way," McClelland said. "A lot of City companies,
[and] a lot of people who put their money where we can see where
it's going aren't putting it in the industrial economy, things like
cotton, but in insurance and shipping, things like that." Much of
the money was invested in the then-new railways, which were
fundamental to the Industrial Revolution -- it's perhaps hard to
argue that there wasn't anyone in the UK who didn't benefit from
that investment.

Tracking down this information was a challenge -- while the site
represents the full records of everyone who received compensation
from the government, McClelland said it was difficult to match
those records with others available. He said: "Ideally, you would
do this with financial papers, but of course they don't exist for
ninety-nine percent of people, but there are sources like
the London Gazette where you can find people
making investments in banks and insurance companies. Railway
companies published lists of people investing in the railways in
the 1840s and you can track them. Sometimes you can't be sure it's
the same person but you can be reasonably confident."

"One of the things we've done is public workshops in various
cities in Britain at which people came along to help -- you get
family historians, people who are interested because either they
had ancestors who were enslaved people, or you get people whose
ancestors were slave owners. We want this to be a public resource
and people can contribute to it." There's a facility on the site
for people who wish to make corrections or additions. The site's
database was designed by McClelland, and built by web designer Mark Hadley.

"We want it to be comprehensive, particularly for the absentee
owners living outside of Britain, but is it? Probably not,"
McClellan said. "Some of these people are very obscure. Sometimes
trying to find out the most basic details -- dates of birth and
death, residence -- is very difficult. It's not comprehensive in
terms of the legacies. The cultural legacies, collections of books
or art, that's a very hugely time-consuming thing to do. There's
also the imperial legacy -- there are people going out to the
Empire as businessmen, administrators, and now their families will
be living in Australia or Canada or wherever."

Comments

usually when slavery is mentioned, white people get embarrassed and say 'it was hundreds of years ago...get over it...nothing to do with me etc'

The truth is, they are living the privileged life they are, because their great grand fathers like these guys received huge payouts and became rich as a result of slavery.

So yes, you have a responsibility to give back. Not sure how, but just don't tell me your are not responsible for any of it,

James

Mar 1st 2013

Lol! What huge debate! The slave trade, tobacco and sugar plantations are anything but a secret. Taught in schools, on TV, in museums. Not. a. secret. And the 'usual' white response is the correct one. Nothing to do with me. At all. You, if you are living in the UK, and black, then you are living in the same country, at the same time, as me. You could argue that you are benefiting from the proceeds of slavery yourself by living here and now. Ridiculous argument.

And the 'responsibility to give back' - give what, and to whom? Furthermore, if you are mixed race, what then? Are you going to be 50% responsible for slavery, using your white-guilt model? Are you going to have DNA tests to determine guilt according to the percentage of ethnically 'pure' slave blood? Another ridiculous proposition.

Nobody alive today is responsible for the transAtlantic slave trade. And if you have compensation based upon 'perceived injustice', you'll just get 'victims by proxy' queuing up, each claiming to be more entitled to compensation than the next person. As I said above, how are you going to sort out who's 'black enough' or 'too white' to qualify for this magical money, which is coming out of - well, out of whose pocket, exactly? I won't be voluntarily contributing.